Photography by Nasir Hamid

October, 2012

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These shots are my first attempts at experimenting with freelensing which is when you hold a lens in front of a camera without it being physically attached to the camera. The beauty of this is being able to freely move the lens around and create tilt/shift effects that you’d never be able to achieve if the lens was attached to the camera body. The images here were created 100% in camera on film, I haven’t applied any fake filters. Have you ever wondered where ideas for the looks you get in apps such as Instagram come from? These were the last three frames on the roll I happened to have in my camera at the time. Now that I’ve seen how good these shots have turned out I’m keen to try this technique on some portraits. Any volunteers?

[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66 with an old Carl Zeiss lens that I transplanted from a 6×9 folding camera, Fuji Pro 400H film home processed by me.

My tests with semi-stand film development continue, this time I used a roll of Kodak Plus-X that expired in 2001. It came in a batch of random expired films that I bought a while ago and to be honest I wasn’t expecting great results but I was pleasantly surprised when I hung this roll up to dry. For this roll I used Rodinal because some of my research into stand development suggested it to be a good developer to reduce base fog of expired film, this information proved to be correct. The whole roll was shot during one lunch hour in some of the gloomiest weather/light you can imagine but you’d never know it from the images. These images are from the first half of the roll.

These images are from the first test roll through a medium format camera I came across recently. It’s a Bronica ETRSi (6×4.5 format) and so far I have really enjoyed using it thanks to its small compact size and light weight. The weather this week in Oxford has been incredibly grim and gloomy but I was so keen to try this camera out that I decided to shoot some test shots regardless and after seeing these shots I’m glad I did. More to come.

Recently I’ve been doing a little research into semi-stand film developing and I finally felt ready to give it a try. First I needed a roll of film to process so I shot one during a lunch hour and headed over to the darkroom after work. The film expired in 2003 so I was half expecting a bit of a fail with this experiment but despite quite a heavy base fog on the film it seemed to scan quite nicely considering the age of the film.

[Tech info:] Mamiya M645 1000s, 80mm/f1.9 lens, Kodak Tri-X (expired 2003), processed in Kodak HC110 (dilution 1:119) for 1 hour with a few gentle agitations at the 30min stage. I used 6ml of HC110 syrup to make 720ml of working developer, this is what my research suggested.

Some photography from earlier in the summer, made during my lunch hour photo walk around Oxford city centre. I planned to post these soon after processing them but they got a bit lost in the shuffle of my mountain of films to scan so I apologise for the delay. We had a bit of a wet summer as I recall and one of my favourite places to go when it’s raining is the University museum of natural history on Parks Road (the bottom four images). Not only does the building have an incredible interior but it’s packed with amazing things too. Well worth a visit.

These shots were made earlier in the summer during one of my lunch time photo walks. Somehow they got lost in the shuffle and were scanned but I didn’t get around to posting them (that seems to happen a fair bit with me because I do so much photography). Apologies if you were waiting for these to show up.

Back in May I was invited to do some photography during the dress rehearsal of a theatre production called Killing Hitler by the director of the production. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it so instead I went along to the opening night to try to squeeze in a little photography during curtain up. You’d think I would have learnt my lesson from trying that during a production of Cabaret with not a huge amount of success but I felt it was worth a try. Needless to say the cast and crew had more important things on their minds than to make time for my photography so all I managed to get was these three shots. It’s a shame because the set for the opening scene looked really good with the lighting. My thanks go to the director, Lucie Dawkins and the cast and crew for putting up with me.

More images that I made during St Giles’ Fair at the beginning of September. This is the contents of an entire roll of medium format film, 12 frames, none deleted. [Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66, 80/f2.8 lens, loaded with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Rodinal 1:50.

Next month (November) there are a number of events going on for Oxford Fashion Week, some of which I’m hoping to do some photography at. Last year I did a lot of photography backstage at the various fashion shows but it was all digital. This year I’m planning to stick with film. Earlier today there was a casting call that I attended in an ‘unofficial’ capacity simply to do a little portrait photography to blog, just for fun. Thanks goes to Nick Seagrave, the OFW team and everyone that agreed to be photographed. All of these portraits were made on Fuji instant pack film which is just like Polaroid. I have a special back on my camera that slides to allow me to make two exposures on one print.

Some photography from a day trip to London last weekend. The weather was amazingly warm (for October) and the light was perfect for photography. First stop, Portobello market where there was no shortage of amazing stalls and photogenic people to photograph. It was a bit too busy to stop many people which was a shame but instead it was nice just to chat with some of the market stall owners especially the ones selling film cameras. If you find the stall selling old letterpress type (I think it’s called The Old Print Shop), be sure to check out the camera seller in the building opposite them. From the outside it’s not obvious what an amazing collection of cameras are inside and the greek gentleman is a joy to talk to (last pic).

This is an entire roll of film that I shot during my recent trip to Barcelona. This roll probably has the most street portraits on it out of the whole trip. A couple of the gentlemen below (man with beret and man with glasses without a hat) are street artists that will draw/paint your portrait for you. I thought it was an interesting reversal to ask them to let me make their portraits. They didn’t speak much english but sign language got my message across. The two young guys smoking outside the pub were fun and very enthusiastic about my camera. The guy on the right brought his 35mm Rolleiflex film camera out to show me. When I told them my blog address I expected them to type it into a mobile phone but instead one of them produced a notepad and pen. I was surprised and remarked ‘so you like analogue?’ to which one of them replied ‘analogue is the best!’. Right on guys! If you’re ever looking for a great vegetarian place to eat in Barcelona you can’t do much better than to eat at Moaz in the Gothic quarter (left column 5th down). The staff are so friendly and the food is excellent.

It feels so good to be back on the streets of Oxford for my regular lunch hour photo walk. After spending last week in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) it was nice to feel the familiar positive vibe on the streets in town. The University students are back and it’s impossible not to notice – they’re everywhere. I decided to shoot some Fuji pack film today at lunch time in what was a really good session. The images below are all in the order they were shot in the space of around 20 minutes. The construction workers are working on the new Bodleian library building that’s being renovated on Broad Street. I enjoyed chatting with them, a nice group of guys that seemed to appreciate my passion for using old film cameras.

[Tech info:] Mamiya RB67, 90mm lens, Fuji FP100-C instant pack film.

Fab' Mo' Blues, Cornmarket Street.

Rob - Brookes University student. Market street.

Construction workers, Broad Street. I didn't notice the blood until I peeled the print back at my office.